Stories From Today's Russia

These stories are fun and help you learn to read Russian, without being too difficult. There is plenty of new vocabulary, with explanatory notes. In addition, there is some cultural material, with a glimpse of life in modern Russia, such as the story of a family living in a communal apartment in St. Petersburg. The most interesting one was a true story of a polar bear cub taken to live with a family in Siberia, encompassing ecological concerns and the life of Russians working in the far north.

I received a refund for both the shipping and handling and the cost of the book at separate times after contacting your customer service and explaining to them that I had not received the book. I contacted by e-mail your customer service explaining to them at least on 2 separate occasions that USPS never acknowledged picking up the item from Amazon but only acknowledging that they received notice to pick up item. This must have been to difficult for your customer service department to understand. When they sent me the refund for the actual item they had enough forethought to ask me to inform them if I did receive the item.
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I have found very few books geared for English speakers at the intermediate level, so if you fall into the same category, get this book! The stories are engaging, and there are a lot of words to learn and lots more to relearn.

English translations for many words and some phrases are included along the bottom of each page. The only thing I found odd was that some very difficult words were not translated, yet some of the easier ones were. But even if it had no translations at all, I would still recommend it.

One more thing: If you find the first story to be difficult to read, start with the second story and move on to the third - I found them to be much less difficult.

After studying Russian for a few months I wanted to try reading something. At first I was seriously over-ambitious and struggled to read a paragraph of Pushkin, looking up every word. I decided Stories from Today's Russia might be more suitable. I initially found the text to be quite difficult; there were a good number of words I didn't know, but as I continued reading I began to find I could read more quickly, making less and less use of my dictionary. These stories are ideal for someone with a reasonable vocabulary and a fair knowledge of the basic rules of Russian grammar. They are neither so easy that there is no challenge at all, nor so hard that they become tedious. It helps that the stories themselves are quite interesting and varied. There are a good number of pictures and maps and some short exercises. I found this book really useful not only because I learned a good number of new words and improved my understanding of some grammar points, but also because in the end I began to really enjoy reading Russian. Maybe one day I will be ready for Pushkin.

There are three novelettes here. The first is about a German who comes to stay with her teenage Petersburg penfriend, the second about a pet Polar Bear and the last about a shipwrecked boy.

The text is up-to-date and not patronising with the minimum of footnotes.

Critically speaking the stories are genuinely weird especially the true one about a polar bear who thinks he's human and who lives in a tower block. Apparently it was also made into a documentary.

If you can't find a suitable reader, then this will suffice and should take you a couple of weeks to progress through. However the varied language used shows you how Russian verbs are used in context, and thus the book will last you a long time as a grammar reference. There are also short annotated Russian stories for learners in the weekly English version of 'Moscow Today'. Check this out too.